Cooks Sawmills - any good?

[Squaredy]

17 hours ago, Big J said:

My inclination is that if you are finding that you've a ready supply of large diameter logs, that having a chainsaw based log halver fabricated would be the way to go. 

 

Before I got the Trakmet saw, I used to halve all of my larger logs with a chainsaw mill with extra long uprights. It's not that easy, and isn't something you'd want to leave your employees doing. 

 

£7-10k would probably see you to getting a carriage based chainsaw mill. Spec it with a 120-140cm throat, and it would mean you could halve just about anything. Or, you could mill it through and through if you are feeling masochistic. 

 

I can't stress enough how stable boards are from large logs, with one side straight edged through the heart. They mill really quickly on the sawmill (you just stand the half up vertically, mill through until you're a board shy of the heart and flip the cant) and you eliminate 95% of all movement and drying defect. It's brilliantly easy for your customers to select bookmatched boards as you'll have thousands of them, all of them with a perfect straight edge (not a rough and ready edge from free hand halving). 

If I were milling hardwoods again (which I won't) then that is the way I'd go. Wide throat bandsaw technology is hit and miss, and you'll get perfect cuts until suddenly the blade decides its' blunt halfway through a cut and you waste £200 worth of timber. 

 

If the carriage based chainsaw mill is interesting for you, I've got a little one coming from TCF engineering next week which could be scaled up I'd have thought. Mine's only 3.5kw 240v on an 18" throat, but you'd fly through the timber on 10-15kw three phase.

Very good advice Jonathon and appreciated.  

 

I do have a need to produce wide double edge slabs though.  

 

I was tempted by an old Forester with a 1.8m width of cut down in Devon last year but I really do not fancy such a monster and the blades were 6 inches wide and £300 each.

 

Chainsaw milling would be my choice if it were just one or two logs.  Imagine a slab through an 800mm wide Yew, and yes I do have such a log.

[Big J]

1 hour ago, Squaredy said:

Very good advice Jonathon and appreciated.  

 

I do have a need to produce wide double edge slabs though.  

 

I was tempted by an old Forester with a 1.8m width of cut down in Devon last year but I really do not fancy such a monster and the blades were 6 inches wide and £300 each.

 

Chainsaw milling would be my choice if it were just one or two logs.  Imagine a slab through an 800mm wide Yew, and yes I do have such a log.

 

I've cut yew like that before, both with the chainsaw mill and also the Trakmet. 

 

I understand that there is a market demand for such slabs, but I'd encourage you to only cut them when absolutely necessary. As a rule when I had the Trakmet sawmill, I never put wide boards into my own stock. I'd cut wide boards for other people, whether on contract milling with their timber, or supplying it from my roundwood pile, but they always assumed the risk. 

 

A dedicated chainsaw slabber/halver might be the cheapest way to produce big boards when you need them, and break down larger logs for further resawing on a bandmill the rest of the time. Such a machine would be brilliant for quartering oak for quarter sawing too.

[difflock]

.........

waffle removed

Edited May 11, 2019 by difflock

[farmerjohn]

On 10/05/2019 at 17:58, Big J said:

My inclination is that if you are finding that you've a ready supply of large diameter logs, that having a chainsaw based log halver fabricated would be the way to go. 

 

Before I got the Trakmet saw, I used to halve all of my larger logs with a chainsaw mill with extra long uprights. It's not that easy, and isn't something you'd want to leave your employees doing. 

 

£7-10k would probably see you to getting a carriage based chainsaw mill. Spec it with a 120-140cm throat, and it would mean you could halve just about anything. Or, you could mill it through and through if you are feeling masochistic. 

 

I can't stress enough how stable boards are from large logs, with one side straight edged through the heart. They mill really quickly on the sawmill (you just stand the half up vertically, mill through until you're a board shy of the heart and flip the cant) and you eliminate 95% of all movement and drying defect. It's brilliantly easy for your customers to select bookmatched boards as you'll have thousands of them, all of them with a perfect straight edge (not a rough and ready edge from free hand halving). 

If I were milling hardwoods again (which I won't) then that is the way I'd go. Wide throat bandsaw technology is hit and miss, and you'll get perfect cuts until suddenly the blade decides its' blunt halfway through a cut and you waste £200 worth of timber. 

 

If the carriage based chainsaw mill is interesting for you, I've got a little one coming from TCF engineering next week which could be scaled up I'd have thought. Mine's only 3.5kw 240v on an 18" throat, but you'd fly through the timber on 10-15kw three phase.

Hi BigJ,

I would be interested in getting a price for scaled up wide cut sawmill from TCF please.

 

[Big J]

19 minutes ago, farmerjohn said:

Hi BigJ,

I would be interested in getting a price for scaled up wide cut sawmill from TCF please.

 

I'll ask him. What throat would you need?

[farmerjohn]

35 minutes ago, Big J said:

I'll ask him. What throat would you need?

I am in a similar predicament to Squaredy i have wide logs to mill. I do also have a wide chainsaw mill.

i would be interested in a cost to be bale to cut a slab 1000mm and 1200mm if he can do that wide.

Regards, John

[Mikesmill]

I also did a lot of investigation on this subject, as I wanted to cut large slabs efficiently. After weighing all the options I went for a Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber. I'd tried the clip on Slabber with my older Peterson and although it could cut huge slabs, it was slow and hard work. I took a punt on the DWS being as fast as they said and I'm not disappointed - in fact I was pleasantly surprised! The hyperskip chain goes so fast that it can cut a two foot wide slab within a couple of minutes, and yesterday I quartersawed a 3 foot wide oak quarter into 3 inch thick slabs on my own within 2 hours, something that would have taken me all day before. I cut 5 foot wide pine slabs for a customer the other week, and it got through that quite quickly considering, too. 

[Big J]

14 minutes ago, Mikesmill said:

I also did a lot of investigation on this subject, as I wanted to cut large slabs efficiently. After weighing all the options I went for a Peterson Dedicated Wide Slabber. I'd tried the clip on Slabber with my older Peterson and although it could cut huge slabs, it was slow and hard work. I took a punt on the DWS being as fast as they said and I'm not disappointed - in fact I was pleasantly surprised! The hyperskip chain goes so fast that it can cut a two foot wide slab within a couple of minutes, and yesterday I quartersawed a 3 foot wide oak quarter into 3 inch thick slabs on my own within 2 hours, something that would have taken me all day before. I cut 5 foot wide pine slabs for a customer the other week, and it got through that quite quickly considering, too. 

It's a useful bit of kit certainly but is better as a stand-alone mill as it's unable to break down large logs into quarters or halves due to the lack of vertical throat.

[Mikesmill]

2 minutes ago, Big J said:

It's a useful bit of kit certainly but is better as a stand-alone mill as it's unable to break down large logs into quarters or halves due to the lack of vertical throat.

That's right, the larger logs that I want quartersawn have to be cut first into quarters by hand with a big chainsaw. But as Squaredy says: "I do have a need to produce wide double edge slabs though"

[Big J]

Just now, Mikesmill said:

That's right, the larger logs that I want quartersawn have to be cut first into quarters by hand with a big chainsaw. But as Squaredy says: "I do have a need to produce wide double edge slabs though"

Things in life more unpleasant than chainsaw milling: 

 

• Forensic tax inspection
• root canal dental work
• hand quartering logs